Methodist Medical Center Foundation: William (Bill) J. Wilcox, Jr.

Contents
ASHLYN WHISNANT 2
WILLIAM (BILL) J. WILCOX, JR. 21
DR. ALBERT WILEY 36
METHODIST MEDICAL CENTER ORAL HISTORY
ASHLYN WHISNANT
Interviewed by Jan McNally
Date unknown
MRS. MCNALLY: Ok, would you state your full name?
MRS. WHISNANT: Ashlyn Whisnant.
MRS. MCNALLY: What was your maiden name, Ashlyn?
MRS. WHISNANT: Spencer.
MRS. MCNALLY: Spencer, yes, that is right I remember meeting your Mom. How could I forget that? You were born where and when?
MRS. WHISNANT: In Charlotte, North Carolina in 1932.
MRS. MCNALLY: So how and when did you meet Marshall?
MRS. WHISNANT: Well, I met him at First Methodist Church in Charlotte, which we both attended, and we met at Methodist Youth Fellowship at the Methodist Church.
MRS. MCNALLY: And when was that?
MRS. WHISNANT: That was in about 1950.
MRS. MCNALLY: And so kind of tell us a little bit about your courtship?
MRS. WHISNANT: Well he was a senior in college and I was a senior in high school. I went to Women’s College in Greensboro, UNC Greensboro, and he did a hospital internship at Charlotte Memorial, which was funded by the Duke endowment. At that time, there were no Master’s Degrees in Hospital Administration and this was what you did when you graduated from college if you wanted to work in a hospital.
MRS. MCNALLY: Like on-the-job training.
MRS. WHISNANT: It was on-the-job training. He took a job in Eastern North Carolina as far east as US 70 goes. Lots of local people had made a lot of money during World War II and they wanted to do something for the folks back home so they built them a hospital. They went to the Duke Endowment folks for advice on who to hire to run it and they recommended Marshall. He went down when the hospital was built, even before it was built. The site for the hospital had to be dredged up out of the bay which was on the water, and we were there during the whole time of construction and for a total of well over two years. We went from there to Kingsport, and we were there for 12 years and then came to Oak Ridge and we were there until he retired.
MRS. MCNALLY: So how did it come about that he ended up in Oak Ridge? How did he feel about it or how did they approach him?
MRS. WHISNANT: The Chair of the Board in Oak Ridge at the time and I can’t remember his name, but I know Merrill Byrd was not the Board Chairman then but he was on the board at that time. Marshall came down and interviewed and took the job in October 1967, I believe.
MRS. MCNALLY: I think 1967, also.
MRS. WHISNANT: We were there until he retired. And we were there after he retired.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yeah, so you were living in Oak Ridge in 1967, and you just recently moved. Did he come to Methodist to be the administrator.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes.
MRS. MCNALLY: So that was pretty much the job he had there. Now later I know they kind of restructured.
MRS. WHISNANT: They had a corporate structure.
MRS. MCNALLY: Right. Right.
MRS. WHISNANT: After that. He had been there a while and I don’t know when that occurred, I don’t remember the year. But the board decided to do that.
MRS. MCNALLY: So what was it like in those early years?
MRS. WHISNANT: Well it hasn’t changed very much, actually.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes.
MRS. WHISNANT: The hospital changed a great deal continually. It was a great place and it still is a great place to raise children. Of course, the schools are superb and we enjoyed every minute of it. And he said so many times, “There was never a day that he did not look forward to going to work”.
MRS. MCNALLY: I remember hearing him say that.
MRS. WHISNANT: He loved what he did.
MRS. MCNALLY: I think that I remember that he never had like a sick day.
MRS. WHISNANT: Never, no he never took a sick day.
MRS. MCNALLY: I remember there where days, you know when I knew him and worked a lot closer with him later where he would not feel very good but he never missed a day due to illness, which I always found phenomenal. He was such a role model for the others who worked here. So do you remember in those early years anything much about the medical staff or any specific physicians that stick out?
MRS. WHISNANT: I don’t remember how many were on the staff when we went there, seemed like maybe 20 or 30, and we did recruiting continuously and we personally did that and loved it. I probably cooked three Saturday evening meals a month with visiting physicians there in our home.
MRS. MCNALLY: So you brought them to your home.
MRS. WHISNANT: Oh, yes because there was no restaurant, to take them to.
MRS. MCNALLY: Right.
MRS. WHISNANT: And we did not want to be dependent on Knoxville.
MRS. MCNALLY: Right.
MRS. WHISNANT: For anything.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes.
MRS. WHISNANT: So we had them in our home. And that was great. I can’t…. well I guess I could go through the list now and look at it and tell you who those were but they were numerous and in later years, I guess, well members of the medical staff did more of that and that was as it should be. They were recruiting their own associates.
MRS. MCNALLY: Once you had built the foundation and they were growing their group. Now I remember early ones like Dr. John and Dr. Robert DePersio.
MRS. WHISNANT: They were there.
MRS. MCNALLY: Dr. Caldwell came a little bit later. Dr. Preston.
MRS. WHISNANT: Dr. Pugh was there.
MRS. MCNALLY: They were all fundamental…. the original doctors.
MRS. WHISNANT: And the double ENT guys who were there and I can’t remember their names….
MRS. MCNALLY: Was there a Johnson?
MRS. WHISNANT: Yeah, and he had a partner. And Bud King.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes, Dr. King. Avery King, the urologist. And Dr. Hardy.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, he was one too.
MRS. MCNALLY: Dr. Bill Hardy, pediatrician.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, he was there. There were several surgeons.
MRS. MCNALLY: I am trying to think when they came, was Dr. Bigelow early?
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, Bigelow.
MRS. MCNALLY: Dr. Bob Bigelow, an original surgeon.
MRS. WHISNANT: He had a partner.
MRS. MCNALLY: Was it Dr. Dunlap?
MRS. WHISNANT: No, but he was one…. he came later. After we did and Dr. Bigelow had a partner and Dr. Reagan.
MRS. MCNALLY: He was a gynecologist. I think it was Julian Reagan. [ed. he was an Army Doctor here].
MRS. WHISNANT: I believe that is right. And there was an orthopedist too who was there.
MRS. MCNALLY: Was it Dr. Spray?
MRS. WHISNANT: Dr. Spray was here. Paul Spray and his partner Joe Tittle and there was another one.
MRS. MCNALLY: He still lives in Oak Ridge, George Stevens.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, Dr. Stevens and he just retired a few years ago.
MRS. MCNALLY: Right he did, in fact we saw him the other night at dinner. So when you came into town ….you sort of had a ready made community of people who worked with the hospital and the medical staff.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yeah, so how was that for you as a wife of the administrator?
MRS. WHISNANT: Well, Marshall never wanted me to be involved in the hospital. He never wanted me to be a volunteer, he said, No, absolutely not. There was too much room for politics there.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes.
MRS. WHISNANT: So I was never real close to those ladies, but of course I knew them and had contact with them in the community but they were a…
MRS. MCNALLY: A little bit like being the preacher’s wife.
MRS. WHISNANT: Sort of like that.
MRS. MCNALLY: Be friendly but have a professional distance.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes.
MRS. MCNALLY: Now when did Ralph Lillard, Rick Stooksbury, and Betty Cantwell come?
MRS. WHISNANT: Well Ralph was already here when we came.
MRS. MCNALLY: Ok, so Ralph was already here. Ralph Lillard, he was like a student or …
MRS. WHISNANT: He was Paul Bjork’s assistant, when we came.
MRS. MCNALLY: So he was like an assistant administrator.
MRS. WHISNANT: That was a great blessing. They were wonderful people of course Gladys was a CLNA and he was working out here.
MRS. MCNALLY: What about Rick Stooksbury?
MRS. WHISNANT: Now Rick came….there was one CFO before Rick came and he is now in Florence, South Carolina, and has been for years. I can’t think of his name but then Rick came and he was there the whole time we were. [Editor’s note: Dean Van Hooser]
MRS. MCNALLY: I know one of the real strengths at Methodist was not only Marshall’s leadership and his vision but the fact that they had a team that worked so closely together and had, you know, so much synergy among members of the hospital leadership.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, they did.
MRS. MCNALLY: You know that was something that was a real gift for Methodist.
MRS. WHISNANT: It was.
MRS. MCNALLY: Because I think it made the difference in terms of making it successful, in really having a team of folks that work so well together.
MRS. WHISNANT: They were all on the same page.
MRS. MCNALLY: They were very much aligned around, you know, doing what was right.
MRS. WHISNANT: The same set of goals.
MRS. MCNALLY: Right, so that was something that I think across the state that was very much recognized and respected. Let’s see - so, as the hospital changed in terms of the physical plant what where some of the milestones or the things that you remember.
MRS. WHISNANT: Well the acute care wing, I call it wing, just because it was all on one end of the building, that was one I remember - that wasn’t the first thing - but that is the first thing that comes to mind. I think that is about the time when you ran Intensive Care.
MRS. MCNALLY: I did, I came after it was built, but it was relatively new when I came there. I think it was built maybe the seventies and I came in 1980 as a nursing student, and again as a new graduate in 1981. I think maybe the critical care wing was built in 1977 / 1975 or so. Does that sort of sound like you remember it?
MRS. WHISNANT: Probably. Yeah. I have it on a cup somewhere, I guess it is in my china cabinet but yeah.
MRS. MCNALLY: So that is kind of the first the major identifying event you remember.
MRS. WHISNANT: But after that, it seemed like something was always under construction.
MRS. MCNALLY: It was, it was. And I remember you know a milestone being the name change, you know under Marshall’s leadership moving from the Oak Ridge Hospital of Methodist Church to the Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge.
MRS. WHISNANT: And of course that had to be approved by the General Conference.
MRS. MCNALLY: Right. So do you remember was that a hard thing to get approved.
MRS. WHISNANT: No, it wasn’t. Of course anything new, anything that changes is/can be difficult but it really wasn’t.
MRS. MCNALLY: But I remember when that was announced and that is when that new lobby and new front of the hospital that had the administrative offices was done at that time and the Physician’s Plaza Building.
MRS. WHISNANT: When, what year was that?
MRS. MCNALLY: I don’t….
MRS. WHISNANT: But you had been there a long time by then.
MRS. MCNALLY: No I had not, I want to say that was very early 1980’s, that was maybe shortly after I came, like maybe 1982 or 1983 or something like that. I remember going to the ceremony where they sort of unveiled that entrance and lobby and the new name and everything. In terms of different services or programs that were kind of added and things that they worked on anything there that stands out in your mind at all?
MRS. WHISNANT: Well the open heart surgery – open heart stands out in my mind because I was a beneficiary of it very early on.
MRS. MCNALLY: You were, weren’t you?
MRS. WHISNANT: I was very thankful for that I could stay here and didn’t have to go somewhere else, Birmingham, Houston or Nashville. That was a big deal.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes it was.
MRS. WHISNANT: Dr.Hall, he is still here.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes, he really helped us make that program successful. That group that he is with, East Tennessee Cardiovascular Surgeons, they recruited him to really lead that program. We started it before he came and a surgeon from Knoxville came out, Dr. Wear, who was the originator of that group and then they recruited Dr. Hall, I want to say 1986/1985/1987 something like that, to come and really be the Methodist Heart Doctor and of course others supported him in that.
MRS. WHISNANT: He didn’t operate anywhere else for a long time, didn’t he?
MRS. MCNALLY: Well he did because he would have to take calls and share calls but primarily he was at Methodist and really I think poured his heart and soul into making that program successful as he lived there……high quality.
MRS. WHISNANT: I can remember when the group recruited him to come; we had a big party at the Pollard Auditorium.
MRS. MCNALLY: Oh really so you remember that?
MRS. WHISNANT: Yeah, I remember that. His wife was pregnant and we had a receiving line and I went through the line and met him and he said, “Oh, I like your name…..I like your name so much, I think if we have a girl I’ll name her Ashlyn.” And they did. That is the only namesake I have.
MRS. MCNALLY: You know things like that stick out in your mind.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yeah, they do.
MRS. MCNALLY: Any other people or particular events or anything that stand out in your mind?
MRS. WHISNANT: Well going back to the acute care wing, there was a new Emergency Room built when that happened, that was quite nice and oh, One Day Surgery.
MRS. MCNALLY: Right.
MRS. WHISNANT: That all came about the same time.
MRS. MCNALLY: And One Day Surgery, that was like a new thing?
MRS. WHISNANT: That was very new and Mary Frances Willis, I remember how she enjoyed that. She is retired now.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes, she has. You know I hear some of the physicians talk about some of the doctors that came like in the early 1970’s when we didn’t have dedicated ER physicians and our physician coverage in the ER was physicians on call, and family practice. So they tell the stories of being on call for the emergency room and the nurses tell the stories about what kind of protocols they worked under and how they assessed the patients and then they called the doctors and had them come in unless the patient could be managed until the next morning or whatever. Of course they all have some stories to tell.
MRS. WHISNANT: Oh yeah.
MRS. MCNALLY: What that was like…
MRS. WHISNANT: Everybody was happy when they had had a contract that provided ER doctors Very happy. They were very happy. And then they went to, I don’t know when but later than that, they went to the use of hospitalist doctors.
MRS. MCNALLY: That came about in the 1980’s. Actually, I would say maybe 1991 when Dr. Richard Dew you know was at a point that he wanted to leave office practice and agreed to come and set up that program. I think really the early success of it in large part is because of his good work. You know he was so well established in the community.
MRS. WHISNANT: Oh yes, everybody likes him.
MRS. MCNALLY: Such a strong patient following and such respect yet among other members of the medical staff that he really got the program off on the right foot. We owe him a debt of gratitude, I think.
MRS. WHISNANT: How many of those are still on staff now?
MRS. MCNALLY: Now, anywhere between ten and thirteen at any given time and it is just fascinating how things change, now between 50 and 70% of the patients in the hospital on any given day are patients of the hospitalist group.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes.
MRS. MCNALLY: So that is a real statement about how medicine has changed.
MRS. WHISNANT: Oh, yes.
MRS. MCNALLY: You have that group of doctors that are in-house all day long and they are dedicated to taking care of the patients. So it is a whole different world than we were formerly used to where every doctor admitted his or her own patient and came to the hospital and managed them as well as his/her office and of course many found that was not manageable. Just not able to do it; so that is where a new specialty of hospitalist medicine arose.
MRS. WHISNANT: Right, right.
MRS. MCNALLY: It is fascinating to see how it all evolved and changed isn’t it? What else sticks out in your mind or were there times that there were things going on in the hospital and maybe it was in the paper that you felt anxious about or that were particularly hard for you and Marshall?
MRS. WHISNANT: I guess the times when the union contracts were being negotiated where that took extra-long hours. There might have been some anxiety attached to those.
MRS. MCNALLY: Very demanding.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, demanding when those negotiations were going on.
MRS. MCNALLY: And of course some years were relatively calm and other years there not. The anxiety was….
MRS. WHISNANT: And then we had, I remember at Christmas time we had the hospital party and it was a large, large group, we would have it at the Armory. We had it …..
MRS. MCNALLY: At the Civic Center, too, I remember.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, I remember and those were, there could be some anxious momentous during those because of…for one reason or another. The worries might have been anticipated but they never materialized.
MRS. MCNALLY: You know that I remember participating in some of those parties in my early years and you know now people are not as interested in those events as much.
MRS. WHISNANT: No, they don’t have them anymore.
MRS. MCNALLY: They don’t but we gave them up because attendance, you know they are very expensive, which is great if you have great participation and people enjoy it, but we found that people’s interest changed and they…
MRS. WHISNANT: And the picnics…..we don’t have the picnics anymore.
MRS. MCNALLY: No, because we had such poor attendance. And we surveyed employees and they said, oh that is really not what we are interested in anymore. But at the time, I remember those events with a lot of fondness because everybody went.
MRS. WHISNANT: Everybody went.
MRS. MCNALLY: And they were so much fun and they were such family events, the picnic in particular.
MRS. WHISNANT: At those picnics there were as many children as there were adults.
MRS. MCNALLY: Oh yeah, and the physicians came and brought their children and we all brought our children and all the leaders you know like you and Marshall, Ralph and Gladys, and Rick and Jane were there, so everybody came. It was a nice day. And sports, we had volleyball, baseball and races and something for everybody to do.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, I guess so and they were held out at the Clark Center Park.
MRS. MCNALLY: Let’s see…..okay anything else that you can think of in particular about those years that you think people would want to know about or that stand out in your mind?
MRS. WHISNANT: I don’t think so. Of course everything was evolving and changing continually but that went with the territory and it still does.
MRS. MCNALLY: It is funny though you know now, we think change at such a rapid pace, it is unprecedented and yet it has always been there in healthcare.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes.
MRS. MCNALLY: There was always construction, conflicts with physicians and you were always recruiting as you said. And those are the same things that are going on now, today. Because in those years Methodist was very “lean”, you had the senior leadership team and they really pretty much…….
MRS. WHISNANT: They worked on everything.
MRS. MCNALLY: They were very knowledgeable about everything, so that certainly has spread out into a larger group that now make all that happen. So talk about Marshall’s retirement and that transition?
MRS. WHISNANT: When he retired he had a meeting five days a week, there were different meetings of the city or at church or what ever but he was just as busy and he never wanted for anything. It was as you said, you didn’t know when he had time to work and he was very busy, therefore he was very happy doing what he was doing.
MRS. MCNALLY: I guess I don’t want to put words in your mouth but it sort of seems to those of us who were looking at it that, you know, he felt very comfortable with Ralph and Rick, that, you know, he had laid the foundation and they were going to be able to step in those roles and he felt comfortable that the hospital was going to be steered in the right direction….
MRS. WHISNANT: Oh, yes he did, yes, it is.
MRS. MCNALLY: That is how it seemed to me, that it was a very smooth transition.
MRS. WHISNANT: It was.
MRS. MCNALLY: And that you know their values were the same, the mission was the same. You had a sense that, you know, that the leadership team, that it was a very natural progression.
MRS. WHISNANT: Right.
MRS. MCNALLY: You know some types of organizations don’t always have that.
MRS. WHISNANT: That is true.
MRS. MCNALLY: I think, you know, to Marshall’s credit, I think he worked hard to develop and mentor and position Ralph and Rick to be ready for those roles.
MRS. WHISNANT: It was never any question in his mind, that they…
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes, and not everyone had the opportunity sometimes to work.
MRS. WHISNANT: Right because the people aren’t there long enough.
MRS. MCNALLY: And it is like we said it was such a stable team and there were those years of working together…
MRS. WHISNANT: And all the team members were so vastly different.
MRS. MCNALLY: They were, they were. And I remember one of the things that Marshall always said and I have stolen it shamelessly because I believe it and at the time he said it, I am not sure I had a full understanding the first time I heard him say it but he said, “I always try to hire people smarter than me.”
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes.
MRS. MCNALLY: I had a lot of respect for Marshall’s intellect because I think he was very bright and very visionary and creative but I think really what he meant is don’t hire people just like yourself. You need a team of people who have strengths that you don’t have. That as a team then you bring a collective strength to the issue. I think he truly believed that.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, he did.
MRS. MCNALLY: He was fascinated by ideals and he was never intimidated by someone else having a good idea. So I think that leaders today could learn something from that.
MRS. WHISNANT: And he always wanted the people that were really in touch with the patient to bring their ideas because they were on the front line and he encouraged that.
MRS. MCNALLY: I guess one of the things too, and I don’t know how much you were even aware of it but I think it would be remiss if we didn’t mention it. You know in the ‘80’s Marshall became an avid reader of Dr. Deming and all of the quality control methods that he developed. He learned and brought in other research and information at that time about process improvement and quality improvement and you know brought that to Methodist in a very organized way. I remember that as the leader of the hospital (you know I was a manager at that time) he said, we are going to do this….we are going to learn how to do it. And we are going to use tried and true techniques to improve quality and service. You know we had teams and we had a steering team and we had facilitators and we trained people in Dr. Deming’s methods. You know Marshall really deserves the credit for leading that effort and as the president of the hospital he believed it, he believed it was the right thing to do. He clearly set high expectations, we are going to do this and he meant it. I don’t know how much of that he talked about at home.
MRS. WHISNANT: Oh he talked about it a lot. Yes, he believed in that whole-heartedly.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes, he did. And you know when Methodist won the Tennessee Quality Award…
MRS. WHISNANT: That was wonderful.
MRS. MCNALLY: It was wonderful but he set the stage for that about five years before when he started us on that journey and we were about to achieve the results.
MRS. WHISNANT: I wondered since then, if any of that is still going on?
MRS. MCNALLY: It is very much so and you know the things evolved and you learn some better ways to do things but this Journey to Excellence which is one of the things I have an opportunity to coach and to work on right now with all the hospitals. It is very much founded in those quality principles and also you may or may not be aware but Methodist has been recognized at the state and national level for the quality of their care and their clinical processes, pretty significantly in the last few years. I think that is very much built on that foundation of process improvement and being very rigorous about doing that in a very formal, structured way and focusing on results. And it resulted in benefit for patients, which is what we are all about. So Marshalll certainly was the father of that at Methodist and very much set the stage for that, so I think that is a very important part of the legacy, he leaves a very important part. Well, anything else that you think is important, noteworthy, or just memories that you have to add?
MRS. WHISNANT: Well, I just feel that it was a wonderful time for our family, the whole 38 years.
MRS. MCNALLY: And having your family growing up in Oak Ridge.
MRS. WHISNANT: All three graduated from Oak Ridge High School and I went to the dedication last week which was really wonderful.
MRS. MCNALLY: It is a great place to have your family.
MRS. WHISNANT: It is.
MRS. MCNALLY: And Methodist was and has been and is, you know, a great place for people to work and for people to get care and for doctors to come and practice and Marshall is certainly a key part of that legacy so I appreciate your time today.
MRS. WHISNANT: You are very welcome.
[End of Interview]
METHODIST MEDICAL CENTER ORAL HISTORY:
WILLIAM (BILL) J. WILCOX, JR.
Interviewed by Patricia Clark
August 18, 2008
MRS. CLARK: I am Pat Clark interviewing Bill Wilcox, long time Oak Ridger and designated our City Historian. The interview is to get resource material to develop a history of the hospital. Bill has a long acquaintance with that. I have Bill’s release form, that he understands the arrangements for this meeting. So we will begin with Bill telling us a little bit about yourself where you were born, your educational experience, and when you came to Oak Ridge.
MR. WILCOX: Ok, Pat, I came to Oak Ridge in 1943 just having graduated from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia as a chemist and anxious to do something to help in our war effort. I interviewed a number of companies who later turned out to all be connected with the Manhattan Project because in the May 1943, many of the big industrial companies that were going to run the Manhattan Project were out scrubbing the graduating classes for chemists and physicists and any kind of technical people they could get to come and be the front line supervisors of the plants at Oak Ridge at elsewhere in the country. I accepted an offer from Eastman Kodak --- actually from a subsidiary called Tennessee Eastman Company. At my hire time there was nothing in Oak Ridge, of course, they were clearing the reservation of farms, building roads and fences in May 1943 so all of us new hires, there were about 50 of us that went to work at Eastman Kodak’s research labs in Rochester, NY. We spent the summer there doing research on uranium processing chemistry for Y-12 and came down here when the first buildings were finished in October 1943. So that’s how I came here.
MRS. CLARK: What was your work assignment when you came?
MR. WILCOX: I was a chemist in the Beta Chemistry recycle operations, of course I knew what I was supposed to do in my lab, but I had no idea where the stuff that I worked on came from or where it went after I got through with it. I was a chemist and our job was purification of uranium and it turned out later that what we were doing is taking the material that was washed off the Alpha calutron receivers and purifying it getting rid of iron, nickel, copper, and other elements in the solutions we got, then purifying it and getting it ready to go into the Beta calutrons final enrichment step. So that was our Beta chemistry job 1943, 1944 and 1945.
MRS. CLARK: I am wondering when you realized what the secret was?
MR. WILCOX: Well, about the same time everybody else in the country did, Pat. August 6, 1945. I knew I was working on uranium 235, as a chemist you had to know that. Of course we keep that all secret, but I guessed it was for an atomic bomb but I had no idea about the schedule for the bomb, or how much material we had made, or how much we had shipped, or when it might be used, and what kind of power it might have. So I was just delighted and surprised as everybody else in the United States and most of the people in Oak Ridge of the 75,000 people that lived here, I guess that about 73,000 of us had only a smattering knowledge not the whole picture so we were all just surprised and delighted that the work we had been doing so long and working so hard for had finally resulted in something of value. Hopefully might help end this terrible war we were in.
MRS. CLARK: Where did you live when you first came?
MR. WILCOX: I was single, 20 years old, so I lived in a dormitory like 13,000 other single people here. I lived in M2 which is on the road right down from the Army hospital. That ridge that the hospital stands on and Ridgeview Mental Health Center now, that whole ridge all the way down to Tyler was covered with men’s dormitories on one side and women’s dormitories on the Turnpike side.
MRS. CLARK: You have helped somewhat describe how the city looked when you first came, where all 75,000 people here when you came or?
MR. WILCOX: Well they. No, when I came the city was just beginning to be built and I would say that there were probably 10,000 or 20,000 people here when I arrived in the fall of 1943. Two years later the town had grown to 75,000, that peak population was achieved in May 1945. So the town had a meteoric, explosive rise in population from about 3,000 people before the Army took the land over. It went from 3,000 in November 1942 to 75,000 in May 1945.
MRS. CLARK: And I know you met Jeanie here, would you like to comment on that?
MR. WILCOX: Love to. She was one of the 13,000 singles here. Jeanie was top flight secretary at Y-12 and she was the division secretary for the Security Division and then for the Maintenance Division at Y-12. She was a flaming red head and I chased her all over the place here for three years before she said, she would marry me. She was having too good a time dating lots of other guys. Singles, really, we worked our heads off but at night we really had a great place for singles, because the community was a closed community in the sense that everybody here had a job and everybody had been investigated by the FBI. So the girls felt comfortable about the guys that were here, it was more like a college campus feeling. You knew what everybody else was here for -- why people were here was to help with the war and so it was a good feeling of trust that you don’t have in many communities. It was a fun place for singles. We bowled and we went to four movies a week at the Center Theater which is now the Playhouse and we danced every night at the Ridge Rec (Recreation) Hall which was across the street from the Alexander Motor Inn.
MRS. CLARK: When where you and Jeanie married?
MR. WILCOX: We were married in August 17, 1946 and we celebrated just yesterday our 62nd Wedding Anniversary.
MRS. CLARK: Congratulations, Bill. Where did you live when you and Jeannie first married?
MR. WILCOX: We lived in Goshen Hall which was a converted H-type dormitory out in the Jefferson Circle, Lincoln Circle it was called. It is close to where the Weatherford Mortuary is now, and it had been converted from single rooms & doubles to suites for married couples and we moved into Goshen Hall in August 1946.
MRS. CLARK: Well let’s get to the first hospital Board of Trustees on which you served. When was that?
MR. WILCOX: The hospital, you remember, was won in an election by the Holston Conference of the Methodist Church in the referendum of 1959 and the first board took over on July 1st, 1960; the date in which the AEC turned everything over to the city of Oak Ridge, now incorporated. That turnover of all the City roads, streets and the fire department and the police department and the brand new hospital all took place on July 1st, 1960. So that is when the first board of the ORHMC went into duty and I was elected to the board three years later in 1963.
MRS. CLARK: Who were other members of the board?
MR. WILCOX: Well, I have a list of them, which I can attach. There were actually 24, it was a large board with 24 people on the board and I have copies of the original charter of the corporation and the bylaws that were passed, these documents explain how these 24 people served. They were in three panels serving three years each, panels of eight people each. So I was on the panel that started in 1963 and I served my three year term and then was re-elected to another three year term, so the years I served were 1963 through 1969. The chairman of the board, the first year was George Christy, he was the chairman for a couple of years, and then Merrill Bird was the chairman for the other years that I served. The board was constituted at the time according the charter, two thirds of the board were to be Methodist’s, with 18 of the board had to be residents in the area that the hospital served. That’s not only from the city, it included Knoxville at the time, so there was some attempt, you see, to have people other than Methodists on the board and my first year for example, 1963, there were 7 non-Methodists on the board -- but it was primarily a Methodist board. Because it was so large they had a large number of committees but one of them was an executive committee which was eight people and it turns out (I learned pretty quickly) that the group that knew what was going on was the executive committee and we had a very strong minded director of the hospital at the time, his name was Paul Bjork and Paul ran a very tight ship. I was a little frustrated in my first years when I found out that I was not welcome to examine the finance records of the church except for a somewhat perfunctory summary report that was issued. He ran a tight ship. But it was a very interesting board to be on.
MRS. CLARK: What do you remember about the original physical plant when you went on the board?
MR. WILCOX: It was a brand new hospital just finished in 1959 and so when I went on the board in 1963 it was still sparkling brand new. It was such a huge improvement over the Army hospital which had not been built with the intention of it lasting 20 years, so everybody was thrilled with the brand new hospital.
MRS. CLARK: Was it built on the site of the Army hospital?
MR. WILCOX: Yes, it was built on the site of the Army hospital but it was much more compact, the Army hospital had sort of been built like topsy with the population growing to 75,000 and nobody in 1943 expected the town to grow past about 20,000 and so all of a sudden the population was so large the hospital just had to build another wing and then had to build another wing and so on, that it had grown spread all over the hill top there. So the new hospital was compact and much taller instead of just one or two stories, it was a four story building. Very, very nice.
MRS. CLARK: Who were some of the early doctors?
MR. WILCOX: The chief of staff was always on the board as an ex-officio member in addition to the twenty-four. There were other ex officio members on it, at least eight, but there might be even more because each of the Methodist ministers in town was an ex-officio member of the hospital board. So the board when it met for its annual meeting it was a very, very large group, it might have been 36 or so. The doctor that was the chief of staff in my first year was Raymond Johnson, MD. In my later years, Avery King, MD was the chief of staff of the hospital.
MRS. CLARK: What were some of the problems the board faced?
MR. WILCOX: The problems the board faced I would say there were then primarily basic survival issues - about internal problems about how to pay for the Medical Arts building that we built and how to pay for renovating the West Mall wing which we were turning into a brand new thing called a Nursing Home. There were those internal problems but external (as far as the community was concerned) the board still faced a lot of hostility that was left over from the election which then still very, very painful in the minds of a lot of the towns people. That election that I referred to earlier determined who was going to own this brand new hospital that the Congress authorized be built for $2.9 million. The fight was three ways. Should doctors own and run it; should it be a city hospital, should it be Methodist church run. Well one of the institutions was the hospital and the Congress had agreed to build this new hospital and they did build it. For a decade (1950s) the hospital had been run by a citizen’s board (501C3 type) of corporation called The Oak Ridge Hospital Incorporated - which included some doctors and other top movers and shakers in town. All through the 1950’s the Army hospital had been run by the Oak Ridge Incorporated, this citizens group. All the bills were being paid by the Federal Government and they had a hospital administrator whose name was Carl Jeffries all through the 1950’s. So when the Atomic Energy Commission in 1958 announced that they were going to give this brand new hospital to somebody the Oak Ridge Hospital Incorporated Group went to the AEC and said, “Well you don’t need to wonder who should take it over, of course it should be us, we have been running this for 10 years and we know all the problems that there are, so why talk about giving it to anybody else.” But the AEC decided that it should not be a slam dunk decision and the others should be allowed to consider owning it. They did not want to… I think they didn’t want the public to feel like they were dictating who should have the hospital. The AEC then opened the ownership possibility to other people and there was a great deal of interest in the part of the community in 1958/59. The Methodists decided they were going to ask for it to be given to the Methodist Church and then a group formed who wanted it to be given to the new city. The people that were getting ready to incorporate the city thought it should be a city hospital. So there were three groups in 1959 that were vying for opportunity to run the hospital. They had a three way election and more people turned out to vote for that, than had voted in years. The result was a pretty even, three-way split. It was very close but the city lost, had the smallest number of votes but it was not decisive. So there was a run-off election between the Methodist Church and the Oak Ridge Hospital Incorporated Group and the Methodists won. And that time it was fairly decisive. But the group that had been running the hospital was very upset and still was in 1963 when I went on the board, --- still a great deal of hostility. The very month that I took office in October 1943 there was a long letter to the editor in the Oak Ridger by Carl Jeffries who had been the administrator of ORH, Inc for 10 years ; now this was in October 1963. He just lambasted the board and said that the Oak Ridge Hospital Methodist Church had promised all these things in the fight for the referendum and (let me read from his letter): “Not a single promise has been kept, their solemn promises have been violated in every instance and there is no evidence of protest by any member of the governing board.” He goes on, “I had been hoping that the Methodist Church, the church that most of my own people for generations might wake up and make restitution to the people of Oak Ridge for the outrageous operation of the hospital so far provided by the Holston conference.” He goes on and on, citing chapter and verse of what the Methodists promised during the campaign. To me, a brand new board member waking up and reading this in the paper, it was alarming. I made a long list of comments and questions for the next board meeting and I just thought, “My gracious we should do something about this.” I wrote a little talk, and made it. I talked to a couple civic clubs titled “How a Citizen Looks at His Hospital,” and the feelings were very strong. From my standpoint it seemed the Board had a major PR problem and I learned soon a lot of them knew there was a PR problem but were being led by the Executive Committee and Counsel. I felt very much like …well they listened to me but I was just one voice. The size of the huge board was one of the problems and not much over two years later we ended up with a disastrous (PR standpoint) strike/walk out. So that didn’t help our image in the community a bit more.
MRS. CLARK: Well, Carl Jeffries would have been out. Is that when Paul Bjork came in?
MR. WILCOX: Yes, well Jeffries was the hospital administrator for The Oak Ridge Hospital Incorporated Group which lost in 1959 and then he went out and Paul came in. -- the Holston Conference Group went in.
MRS. CLARK: You mentioned a strike; would you like to talk more about that?
MR. WILCOX: Well it is an important part, little part of our history; it sure upset the City terribly and maybe worth a sidebar. The trouble had started brewing long before 1966. The immediate cause was the action against the hospital was brought by the BSEIU (Building Services Employees International Union) for the non-nursing people in the hospital and they wanted to organize the staff and have the hospital recognize them as a bargaining agent for all of the orderlies and other hourly workers in the hospital. Initially their interest was in representing both the professional and non-professional, that is to say the nurses as well as everybody else. But even before the middle of July 1966, Paul Bjork started talking to the TN Nurses Association in Nashville so the BSEIU dropped the idea they wanted to represent the nurses and settled on just wanting to represent the others. The hospital board responded to the growing (obviously we had a real problem), so the hospital put out a new personnel policy July 1st which raised wages and guaranteed that nobody would make less than the minimum wage of $1.10 per hour and we increased/improved the other benefits...It was really a good will effort, sadly a little late, on the part of the hospital trying to stem this growing unrest and to stop this push towards recognition of the union which of course the hospital did not want. Well the BSEIU refused to be satisfied with the new personnel policy and went out on strike on July 1st and a number of nurses even went out on strike too at the same time. The Oak Ridger was full of every edition for the next seven weeks, 51 days, of stories about the pickets at six different locations going into the hospital. The volunteers rallied, and lots came to help keep the patients well served. I make it sound like there were lots of people were unhappy with us, true, but there were lots of people in town that were still happy with us and we had lots of volunteers helping sweep the floors, and so on. ……. At first we had people helping in the kitchen too, but the BSEIU found out about that and went to the city and said these people don’t have health cards, it is against the law…..and they stopped that. One of the articles in the paper said that there were about one out every four nurses striking. In other words, there were still a lot of nurses and the hospital of course was very anxious to make sure that patients were taken care of properly. It was a sad, sad situation. We (the Hospital) guided by our lawyers, refused to talk or give out any information about censuses, would not even sit and talk to the union for weeks and newspaper chewed us out royally for that ---but we finally did start talking and the strike ended at 51 days. The union did not get their recognition, they got an agreement with the hospital that anybody could join the BSEIU but we agreed all employees were free to join or not to join the BSEIU and the hospital agreed to sign on the dotted line the July 1 personnel policies which we had refused to do all through the strike. We maintained this is our policy and it is all you need, but the union insisted that it be signed. They apparently felt we would not live up to it or something. So in the end we did agree to sign that and we did agree to rehire all the strikers that wanted to come back and give them all their benefits. That was the end of that. It was a difficult time, worsened by the City getting into it; the City Council calling for a referendum on the ownership which was ridiculous but they wanted some public denunciation of the current owners -- that never did happen. The City did manage to call a big hearing in the City Council chambers and the board of trustees sat on the dais like were on trial, and the BSEIU sat on the front row and there was a big splash picture in the newspaper and I’m sitting up there along with the rest of the board members, it was an agonizing evening we had there. But the discussions were reasonably civil. They stated their case and Merrill Bird stated our case. We weathered it, but it was no fun. That was a tough year 1966; I served for three more years. One of them finally as Treasurer of the hospital, that after I had been a member of the circle for eight years! I had served on the key executive committee for the last few years. Paul Bjork resigned in 1967. The strike ended in August, he left the following summer, and we hired Marshall Whisnant who of course was an outstanding administrator for many, many years. Three decades or so. Marshall was quite a different administrator than Paul. He really built a fine relationship with the community so that by the time he had been here 10 years or so the community was proud of the hospital, the service being given, and even the way the Methodist Church was running it.
MRS. CLARK: So the administrators hired were Methodist? Still are?
MR. WILCOX: I don’t know.
MRS. CLARK: I think Jan McNally is?
MR. WILCOX: Probably. Probably. I would guess they would be. But, interestingly the board composition has changed through the years from my time. The board when I served was 24 with the 16 Methodists and so on. Somewhere along the during Marshall’s tenure here, the bylaws were changed and the 24 person “Board of Trustees” was reconstituted and by 1985, I know, we had a “Board of Directors” instead of a “Board of Trustees” and there in 1985 it had only 12 people. It stayed that way for at least 10 years until the Covenant relationship developed and at that time we no longer had a “Board of Directors” but now a “MMC Advisory Board” since 1995 ---so the shape of management has changed a great deal over the years.
MRS. CLARK: Were you ever a patient?
MR. WILCOX: Oh, many times. First in 1956. Jeanie and I were both in the hospital at the same time! She had pleurisy and I came in with a bleeding ulcer. They found out about us being both there at the same time and they put us in the same room. So we were in the same room with different aliments for a little while. I had several operations over the years, including my second of two heart by-pass operations. The first one was 1980 and our hospital was not doing them and I had to go to Baptist in Knoxville but my second, I had it here. I had wonderful care, of course I love the hospital as an intuition, and I think they have just done a wonderful, wonderful job providing health care for Oak Ridgers for all these years.
MRS. CLARK: Let’s look at Jeanie a little bit. She was very active in the hospital.
MR. WILCOX: Jeanie, after raising our children, volunteered for years, a day or two a week. Ralph Lillard, finally in 1972 or so asked her to take on the job of being the Hospital’s first paid director of volunteers. She had been doing such a great job for ORHMC and so she took that on and did that for about 20 years or so. Eventually combined all the different volunteer organizations into one. When she went in, there was a group of Red Cross volunteers called the Gray Ladies, and there was a Gift Shop, and there was a Candy Stripers organization and then there was a Pink Ladies Volunteer organization and she brought them all together. She just had a great time. I think did a wonderful job for the hospital.
MRS. CLARK: Well Bill are there any aspects of your service on the board, we had not covered? Is there anything else you would like to comment on?
MR. WILCOX: No, I think I touched on it. Lots of details but I think I have painted the general picture. I certainly cherish my years on the board and look back on them with a great pleasure despite the ups and downs that we had. I think I saw the evolution of the hospital from one which it was very much concerned with its own survival and not too concerned about its image in the community. I saw that change in the six years that I served on the board to a hospital which was determined that they were going to build a great reputation in the community and do it by providing the best quality health care they possibly could.
MRS. CLARK: Do you have anything else to add?
MR. WILCOX: Thanks to you for putting up with me for this interview, Pat. Thank you so much.
MRS. CLARK: Well it’s been delightful, Bill. I hope we covered everything you needed to say.
MR. WILCOX: Thank you.
[End of Interview]
METHODIST MEDICAL CENTER ORAL HISTORY:
DR. ALBERT WILEY
Interviewed by Ray Smith
August 27, 2008
[Editor’s note: The recording microphone was too close to the interviewer and too far from the person being interviewed. The volume too low so that there is a high background noise that makes Dr. Wiley extremely difficult to hear and understand.]
MR. SMITH: What is REAC/TS and what is its relationship with MMC?
DR. WILEY: REAC/TS is a Medical Radiological Emergency Response team.
MR. SMITH: What does REAC/TS stand for?
DR. WILEY: Radiological Emergency Assistance Center/Training Site. We are funded almost entirely by NNSA. It was established, to the best of my knowledge, by the Department of Energy to provide a medical response to radiation accidents. They had a criticality accident at Y-12, I think back around the late ‘50s, 1958, that had something to do with the interest by the Department of Energy in establishing a group such as REAC/TS. Prior to that, they had Oak Ridge Associated Universities Cancer Hospital here and then the hospital, once REAC/TS got funded then, in many ways, took over the emergency response medical emergency assistance, but did not continue any other roles in the hospital [inaudible] research radioactive [inaudible]. We are strictly an operational group, somewhat like a fire department. When we are not responding, we are training ourselves, and then we are training other people to make sure they are capable of response when we are needed. Fortunately, it’s not that often so we end up spending most of our time training other people. We provide many courses for mainly medical people, nurses, paramedics, and physicians at our training site. They come from all over the country for a variety of courses, maybe 13 or 14 a year that run for generally about one week long. Rather unique courses [inaudible] not only do we provide [inaudible] lectures, but we actually really drill, which most people think is fairly unique, real people, real situations very much like an emergency room environment that people would experience in a real radiological accident. We do a lot of training offsite, also and increasingly more and probably [inaudible] number of courses [inaudible] offsite to begin with Department of Energy [inaudible] deal with radiological materials, National Lab, and other places that [inaudible] increasingly training other people in other branches of government such as CDC and a variety of other large hospital around the country that are [inaudible] that in essence if most of what we do.
We also provide the national registry of radiation accidents, most of the accidents that occur in this country and in the world. We periodically study these data and try and learn how to better respond [inaudible] research. In the registry we also provide [inaudible] tools. A couple of years ago, we were the national stockpile for certain [inaudible] drugs, medical counter measures, which were counteracts the [inaudible] of radioactive materials [inaudible] did provide international stockpile, couple of years ago. We still maintain a stockpile, [inaudible] investigating a program would be [inaudible] involving mostly the national laboratory. National lab has a problem, they call us. [Inaudible]. Finally, we do provide emergency response nationally and internationally. We are fairly active in that area in recent years, because we are participating in a large national exercise [inaudible] as part of the medical group, called FERMAC. [Inaudible] It’s a large Department of Energy group [inaudible]. Each section of the country, they all come together and tell us [inaudible] base in Las Vegas, Nevada [inaudible] do a lot of exercises. Medical about 300 people when they all come together. [Inaudible] I have also participated in some international exercises in Korea [inaudible]. The last actual emergency response [inaudible].
Venezuela so occasionally. [Inaudible] United States. Generally, [inaudible] participated in management.
MR. SMITH: Your location is very near the MMC?
DR. WILEY: We are physically attached to the medical center. In fact, the medical center owns the entire facility and the Department of Energy rented it.
MR. SMITH: Is there any other tie between the local hospital and REAC/TS?
DR. WILEY: Yes, as I mentioned exercise participation. We have exercises here at Oak Ridge that you know, Y-12 [inaudible] DOE complex. Mandatory yearly exercises [inaudible]. We have a very close relationship with the hospital. We have an agreement where contaminated people come into the Emergency Room [inaudible] decontamination. [Inaudible].
MR. SMITH: Has there been any occasion where you mentioned most response was to Venezuela, has there been response in the states?
DR. WILEY: That was the most recent international response. We respond probably to 50 calls a year all over this country, although we occasionally get calls internationally.
MR. SMITH: Is it fair to say if there is an accident or an incident involving radiation worldwide, that it is in all likelihood, you are going to get involved in that?
DR. WILEY: I would say the likelihood is extremely high. We are actually a world health organization. [inaudible] We participate in their exercises. [inaudible] and we go to their meetings. We also work very closely with the International Atomic Energy [inaudible] and periodically ask us for our assistance in an accident investigation. So we have close ties internationally. [Inaudible] where we are pretty well involved [inaudible] certainly at consultation level. Occasionally, we actually have to go offsite [inaudible].
MR. SMITH: Now as you know, there are three DOE sites here in Oak Ridge, have there been occasions where you had to respond to incidents here locally that involve the hospital and you as well.
DR. WILEY: Actual incidents that we get called about are things that have happened not infrequently, very seldom involved with very serious explosion. The last time we had any real need to respond locally was [inaudible] Y-12. I was not here at the time. That happened a couple of years before I came.
MR. SMITH: I was actually on the emergency response for that accident at Y-12. I am very familiar with it only from the Y-12 perspective not what happened to them when they got to the hospital.
DR. WILEY: Well, there were some serious injuries. A lot of the patients had to be transferred to Chattanooga.
MR. SMITH: I don’t think you need specific knowledge about that incident but we could use that one as a typical, when Y-12 or ORNL or anyone has employees coming out of those areas, they could possibly be bringing radiation contamination out with them, is that where you would get your organization to get immediately involved in the Emergency Room.
DR. WILEY: We would get immediately involved. Any patient coming into the Emergency Room. We’ve had several other small incidents [inaudible] with very minimal contamination [inaudible] simply washing it off. [inaudible].
MR. SMITH: There were several people involved. You’re right, it was very serious. One individual never came back to work. Very bad burns. But again, the relationship that you have with the hospital here makes, if I can turn that on its ear just a little bit, it makes the hospital quite unique because not many other hospitals will have the resource of having a REAC/TS unit right here physically on site.
DR. WILEY: Yes, that is absolutely correct. [inaudible] capability.
MR. SMITH: Can you think of anything else with the relationship between REAC/TS and the hospital that we ought to capture? We talked about training, we talked about exercises, we talked about actual events, we talked about the capability. We may have covered it.
DR. WILEY: I think that is pretty much it, as far as I know.
MR. SMITH: What we will do is include the material that you have here along with the oral history document. I’ll take that and put it in here, that way we will have it.
DR. WILEY: Very good.
MR. SMITH: Can you think of anything else? I might not have asked all the right questions to get everything that you would want to be sure to leave on the tape about it.
DR. WILEY: We, a year or so ago, we were fortunate enough to get money from [inaudible] to establish [inaudible] REAC/TS. We did have this lab at REAC/TS for about a period of about 10 years, 1980s, 1990s, lack of funding caused it to be closed for about 10 years. What this capability does for us at REAC/TS is it gives us the unique capability to assess radiation exposures that people might have had [inaudible]. As you know, the general public, for example, could be very valuable for things like dirty bombs or other terrorist-type things. The general public may be exposed to, of course they don’t wear dosimeter not like people who work in the labs but it turns out that their lymphocytes in their bloodstream can act as a dosimeter. There are certain changes within lymphocytes [inaudible] creation of a certain type of abnormal chromosomes which can be analyzed in blood samples obtained from people who were exposed and give us an idea of what the radiation dose was. We exercised it at international exercises and it is a unique capability [inaudible] civilian way Unites States. [inaudible] research Institute. [inaudible] Very important tool in our emergency response. We have actually two emergency response teams. Each team consists of at least a minimum of a nurse paramedic, a physician, [inaudible] and we are on 24/7. We are called to respond four hours within the United States which we would be on a plane going to the incident. We are also 24/7 for international with a six-hour response time. So, these teams would be deployed within four to six hours [inaudible] with people that I mentioned with a fair amount of medical equipment. Anti-radiation drugs.
[End of Interview]

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Contents
ASHLYN WHISNANT 2
WILLIAM (BILL) J. WILCOX, JR. 21
DR. ALBERT WILEY 36
METHODIST MEDICAL CENTER ORAL HISTORY
ASHLYN WHISNANT
Interviewed by Jan McNally
Date unknown
MRS. MCNALLY: Ok, would you state your full name?
MRS. WHISNANT: Ashlyn Whisnant.
MRS. MCNALLY: What was your maiden name, Ashlyn?
MRS. WHISNANT: Spencer.
MRS. MCNALLY: Spencer, yes, that is right I remember meeting your Mom. How could I forget that? You were born where and when?
MRS. WHISNANT: In Charlotte, North Carolina in 1932.
MRS. MCNALLY: So how and when did you meet Marshall?
MRS. WHISNANT: Well, I met him at First Methodist Church in Charlotte, which we both attended, and we met at Methodist Youth Fellowship at the Methodist Church.
MRS. MCNALLY: And when was that?
MRS. WHISNANT: That was in about 1950.
MRS. MCNALLY: And so kind of tell us a little bit about your courtship?
MRS. WHISNANT: Well he was a senior in college and I was a senior in high school. I went to Women’s College in Greensboro, UNC Greensboro, and he did a hospital internship at Charlotte Memorial, which was funded by the Duke endowment. At that time, there were no Master’s Degrees in Hospital Administration and this was what you did when you graduated from college if you wanted to work in a hospital.
MRS. MCNALLY: Like on-the-job training.
MRS. WHISNANT: It was on-the-job training. He took a job in Eastern North Carolina as far east as US 70 goes. Lots of local people had made a lot of money during World War II and they wanted to do something for the folks back home so they built them a hospital. They went to the Duke Endowment folks for advice on who to hire to run it and they recommended Marshall. He went down when the hospital was built, even before it was built. The site for the hospital had to be dredged up out of the bay which was on the water, and we were there during the whole time of construction and for a total of well over two years. We went from there to Kingsport, and we were there for 12 years and then came to Oak Ridge and we were there until he retired.
MRS. MCNALLY: So how did it come about that he ended up in Oak Ridge? How did he feel about it or how did they approach him?
MRS. WHISNANT: The Chair of the Board in Oak Ridge at the time and I can’t remember his name, but I know Merrill Byrd was not the Board Chairman then but he was on the board at that time. Marshall came down and interviewed and took the job in October 1967, I believe.
MRS. MCNALLY: I think 1967, also.
MRS. WHISNANT: We were there until he retired. And we were there after he retired.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yeah, so you were living in Oak Ridge in 1967, and you just recently moved. Did he come to Methodist to be the administrator.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes.
MRS. MCNALLY: So that was pretty much the job he had there. Now later I know they kind of restructured.
MRS. WHISNANT: They had a corporate structure.
MRS. MCNALLY: Right. Right.
MRS. WHISNANT: After that. He had been there a while and I don’t know when that occurred, I don’t remember the year. But the board decided to do that.
MRS. MCNALLY: So what was it like in those early years?
MRS. WHISNANT: Well it hasn’t changed very much, actually.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes.
MRS. WHISNANT: The hospital changed a great deal continually. It was a great place and it still is a great place to raise children. Of course, the schools are superb and we enjoyed every minute of it. And he said so many times, “There was never a day that he did not look forward to going to work”.
MRS. MCNALLY: I remember hearing him say that.
MRS. WHISNANT: He loved what he did.
MRS. MCNALLY: I think that I remember that he never had like a sick day.
MRS. WHISNANT: Never, no he never took a sick day.
MRS. MCNALLY: I remember there where days, you know when I knew him and worked a lot closer with him later where he would not feel very good but he never missed a day due to illness, which I always found phenomenal. He was such a role model for the others who worked here. So do you remember in those early years anything much about the medical staff or any specific physicians that stick out?
MRS. WHISNANT: I don’t remember how many were on the staff when we went there, seemed like maybe 20 or 30, and we did recruiting continuously and we personally did that and loved it. I probably cooked three Saturday evening meals a month with visiting physicians there in our home.
MRS. MCNALLY: So you brought them to your home.
MRS. WHISNANT: Oh, yes because there was no restaurant, to take them to.
MRS. MCNALLY: Right.
MRS. WHISNANT: And we did not want to be dependent on Knoxville.
MRS. MCNALLY: Right.
MRS. WHISNANT: For anything.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes.
MRS. WHISNANT: So we had them in our home. And that was great. I can’t…. well I guess I could go through the list now and look at it and tell you who those were but they were numerous and in later years, I guess, well members of the medical staff did more of that and that was as it should be. They were recruiting their own associates.
MRS. MCNALLY: Once you had built the foundation and they were growing their group. Now I remember early ones like Dr. John and Dr. Robert DePersio.
MRS. WHISNANT: They were there.
MRS. MCNALLY: Dr. Caldwell came a little bit later. Dr. Preston.
MRS. WHISNANT: Dr. Pugh was there.
MRS. MCNALLY: They were all fundamental…. the original doctors.
MRS. WHISNANT: And the double ENT guys who were there and I can’t remember their names….
MRS. MCNALLY: Was there a Johnson?
MRS. WHISNANT: Yeah, and he had a partner. And Bud King.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes, Dr. King. Avery King, the urologist. And Dr. Hardy.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, he was one too.
MRS. MCNALLY: Dr. Bill Hardy, pediatrician.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, he was there. There were several surgeons.
MRS. MCNALLY: I am trying to think when they came, was Dr. Bigelow early?
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, Bigelow.
MRS. MCNALLY: Dr. Bob Bigelow, an original surgeon.
MRS. WHISNANT: He had a partner.
MRS. MCNALLY: Was it Dr. Dunlap?
MRS. WHISNANT: No, but he was one…. he came later. After we did and Dr. Bigelow had a partner and Dr. Reagan.
MRS. MCNALLY: He was a gynecologist. I think it was Julian Reagan. [ed. he was an Army Doctor here].
MRS. WHISNANT: I believe that is right. And there was an orthopedist too who was there.
MRS. MCNALLY: Was it Dr. Spray?
MRS. WHISNANT: Dr. Spray was here. Paul Spray and his partner Joe Tittle and there was another one.
MRS. MCNALLY: He still lives in Oak Ridge, George Stevens.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, Dr. Stevens and he just retired a few years ago.
MRS. MCNALLY: Right he did, in fact we saw him the other night at dinner. So when you came into town ….you sort of had a ready made community of people who worked with the hospital and the medical staff.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yeah, so how was that for you as a wife of the administrator?
MRS. WHISNANT: Well, Marshall never wanted me to be involved in the hospital. He never wanted me to be a volunteer, he said, No, absolutely not. There was too much room for politics there.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes.
MRS. WHISNANT: So I was never real close to those ladies, but of course I knew them and had contact with them in the community but they were a…
MRS. MCNALLY: A little bit like being the preacher’s wife.
MRS. WHISNANT: Sort of like that.
MRS. MCNALLY: Be friendly but have a professional distance.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes.
MRS. MCNALLY: Now when did Ralph Lillard, Rick Stooksbury, and Betty Cantwell come?
MRS. WHISNANT: Well Ralph was already here when we came.
MRS. MCNALLY: Ok, so Ralph was already here. Ralph Lillard, he was like a student or …
MRS. WHISNANT: He was Paul Bjork’s assistant, when we came.
MRS. MCNALLY: So he was like an assistant administrator.
MRS. WHISNANT: That was a great blessing. They were wonderful people of course Gladys was a CLNA and he was working out here.
MRS. MCNALLY: What about Rick Stooksbury?
MRS. WHISNANT: Now Rick came….there was one CFO before Rick came and he is now in Florence, South Carolina, and has been for years. I can’t think of his name but then Rick came and he was there the whole time we were. [Editor’s note: Dean Van Hooser]
MRS. MCNALLY: I know one of the real strengths at Methodist was not only Marshall’s leadership and his vision but the fact that they had a team that worked so closely together and had, you know, so much synergy among members of the hospital leadership.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, they did.
MRS. MCNALLY: You know that was something that was a real gift for Methodist.
MRS. WHISNANT: It was.
MRS. MCNALLY: Because I think it made the difference in terms of making it successful, in really having a team of folks that work so well together.
MRS. WHISNANT: They were all on the same page.
MRS. MCNALLY: They were very much aligned around, you know, doing what was right.
MRS. WHISNANT: The same set of goals.
MRS. MCNALLY: Right, so that was something that I think across the state that was very much recognized and respected. Let’s see - so, as the hospital changed in terms of the physical plant what where some of the milestones or the things that you remember.
MRS. WHISNANT: Well the acute care wing, I call it wing, just because it was all on one end of the building, that was one I remember - that wasn’t the first thing - but that is the first thing that comes to mind. I think that is about the time when you ran Intensive Care.
MRS. MCNALLY: I did, I came after it was built, but it was relatively new when I came there. I think it was built maybe the seventies and I came in 1980 as a nursing student, and again as a new graduate in 1981. I think maybe the critical care wing was built in 1977 / 1975 or so. Does that sort of sound like you remember it?
MRS. WHISNANT: Probably. Yeah. I have it on a cup somewhere, I guess it is in my china cabinet but yeah.
MRS. MCNALLY: So that is kind of the first the major identifying event you remember.
MRS. WHISNANT: But after that, it seemed like something was always under construction.
MRS. MCNALLY: It was, it was. And I remember you know a milestone being the name change, you know under Marshall’s leadership moving from the Oak Ridge Hospital of Methodist Church to the Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge.
MRS. WHISNANT: And of course that had to be approved by the General Conference.
MRS. MCNALLY: Right. So do you remember was that a hard thing to get approved.
MRS. WHISNANT: No, it wasn’t. Of course anything new, anything that changes is/can be difficult but it really wasn’t.
MRS. MCNALLY: But I remember when that was announced and that is when that new lobby and new front of the hospital that had the administrative offices was done at that time and the Physician’s Plaza Building.
MRS. WHISNANT: When, what year was that?
MRS. MCNALLY: I don’t….
MRS. WHISNANT: But you had been there a long time by then.
MRS. MCNALLY: No I had not, I want to say that was very early 1980’s, that was maybe shortly after I came, like maybe 1982 or 1983 or something like that. I remember going to the ceremony where they sort of unveiled that entrance and lobby and the new name and everything. In terms of different services or programs that were kind of added and things that they worked on anything there that stands out in your mind at all?
MRS. WHISNANT: Well the open heart surgery – open heart stands out in my mind because I was a beneficiary of it very early on.
MRS. MCNALLY: You were, weren’t you?
MRS. WHISNANT: I was very thankful for that I could stay here and didn’t have to go somewhere else, Birmingham, Houston or Nashville. That was a big deal.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes it was.
MRS. WHISNANT: Dr.Hall, he is still here.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes, he really helped us make that program successful. That group that he is with, East Tennessee Cardiovascular Surgeons, they recruited him to really lead that program. We started it before he came and a surgeon from Knoxville came out, Dr. Wear, who was the originator of that group and then they recruited Dr. Hall, I want to say 1986/1985/1987 something like that, to come and really be the Methodist Heart Doctor and of course others supported him in that.
MRS. WHISNANT: He didn’t operate anywhere else for a long time, didn’t he?
MRS. MCNALLY: Well he did because he would have to take calls and share calls but primarily he was at Methodist and really I think poured his heart and soul into making that program successful as he lived there……high quality.
MRS. WHISNANT: I can remember when the group recruited him to come; we had a big party at the Pollard Auditorium.
MRS. MCNALLY: Oh really so you remember that?
MRS. WHISNANT: Yeah, I remember that. His wife was pregnant and we had a receiving line and I went through the line and met him and he said, “Oh, I like your name…..I like your name so much, I think if we have a girl I’ll name her Ashlyn.” And they did. That is the only namesake I have.
MRS. MCNALLY: You know things like that stick out in your mind.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yeah, they do.
MRS. MCNALLY: Any other people or particular events or anything that stand out in your mind?
MRS. WHISNANT: Well going back to the acute care wing, there was a new Emergency Room built when that happened, that was quite nice and oh, One Day Surgery.
MRS. MCNALLY: Right.
MRS. WHISNANT: That all came about the same time.
MRS. MCNALLY: And One Day Surgery, that was like a new thing?
MRS. WHISNANT: That was very new and Mary Frances Willis, I remember how she enjoyed that. She is retired now.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes, she has. You know I hear some of the physicians talk about some of the doctors that came like in the early 1970’s when we didn’t have dedicated ER physicians and our physician coverage in the ER was physicians on call, and family practice. So they tell the stories of being on call for the emergency room and the nurses tell the stories about what kind of protocols they worked under and how they assessed the patients and then they called the doctors and had them come in unless the patient could be managed until the next morning or whatever. Of course they all have some stories to tell.
MRS. WHISNANT: Oh yeah.
MRS. MCNALLY: What that was like…
MRS. WHISNANT: Everybody was happy when they had had a contract that provided ER doctors Very happy. They were very happy. And then they went to, I don’t know when but later than that, they went to the use of hospitalist doctors.
MRS. MCNALLY: That came about in the 1980’s. Actually, I would say maybe 1991 when Dr. Richard Dew you know was at a point that he wanted to leave office practice and agreed to come and set up that program. I think really the early success of it in large part is because of his good work. You know he was so well established in the community.
MRS. WHISNANT: Oh yes, everybody likes him.
MRS. MCNALLY: Such a strong patient following and such respect yet among other members of the medical staff that he really got the program off on the right foot. We owe him a debt of gratitude, I think.
MRS. WHISNANT: How many of those are still on staff now?
MRS. MCNALLY: Now, anywhere between ten and thirteen at any given time and it is just fascinating how things change, now between 50 and 70% of the patients in the hospital on any given day are patients of the hospitalist group.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes.
MRS. MCNALLY: So that is a real statement about how medicine has changed.
MRS. WHISNANT: Oh, yes.
MRS. MCNALLY: You have that group of doctors that are in-house all day long and they are dedicated to taking care of the patients. So it is a whole different world than we were formerly used to where every doctor admitted his or her own patient and came to the hospital and managed them as well as his/her office and of course many found that was not manageable. Just not able to do it; so that is where a new specialty of hospitalist medicine arose.
MRS. WHISNANT: Right, right.
MRS. MCNALLY: It is fascinating to see how it all evolved and changed isn’t it? What else sticks out in your mind or were there times that there were things going on in the hospital and maybe it was in the paper that you felt anxious about or that were particularly hard for you and Marshall?
MRS. WHISNANT: I guess the times when the union contracts were being negotiated where that took extra-long hours. There might have been some anxiety attached to those.
MRS. MCNALLY: Very demanding.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, demanding when those negotiations were going on.
MRS. MCNALLY: And of course some years were relatively calm and other years there not. The anxiety was….
MRS. WHISNANT: And then we had, I remember at Christmas time we had the hospital party and it was a large, large group, we would have it at the Armory. We had it …..
MRS. MCNALLY: At the Civic Center, too, I remember.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, I remember and those were, there could be some anxious momentous during those because of…for one reason or another. The worries might have been anticipated but they never materialized.
MRS. MCNALLY: You know that I remember participating in some of those parties in my early years and you know now people are not as interested in those events as much.
MRS. WHISNANT: No, they don’t have them anymore.
MRS. MCNALLY: They don’t but we gave them up because attendance, you know they are very expensive, which is great if you have great participation and people enjoy it, but we found that people’s interest changed and they…
MRS. WHISNANT: And the picnics…..we don’t have the picnics anymore.
MRS. MCNALLY: No, because we had such poor attendance. And we surveyed employees and they said, oh that is really not what we are interested in anymore. But at the time, I remember those events with a lot of fondness because everybody went.
MRS. WHISNANT: Everybody went.
MRS. MCNALLY: And they were so much fun and they were such family events, the picnic in particular.
MRS. WHISNANT: At those picnics there were as many children as there were adults.
MRS. MCNALLY: Oh yeah, and the physicians came and brought their children and we all brought our children and all the leaders you know like you and Marshall, Ralph and Gladys, and Rick and Jane were there, so everybody came. It was a nice day. And sports, we had volleyball, baseball and races and something for everybody to do.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, I guess so and they were held out at the Clark Center Park.
MRS. MCNALLY: Let’s see…..okay anything else that you can think of in particular about those years that you think people would want to know about or that stand out in your mind?
MRS. WHISNANT: I don’t think so. Of course everything was evolving and changing continually but that went with the territory and it still does.
MRS. MCNALLY: It is funny though you know now, we think change at such a rapid pace, it is unprecedented and yet it has always been there in healthcare.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes.
MRS. MCNALLY: There was always construction, conflicts with physicians and you were always recruiting as you said. And those are the same things that are going on now, today. Because in those years Methodist was very “lean”, you had the senior leadership team and they really pretty much…….
MRS. WHISNANT: They worked on everything.
MRS. MCNALLY: They were very knowledgeable about everything, so that certainly has spread out into a larger group that now make all that happen. So talk about Marshall’s retirement and that transition?
MRS. WHISNANT: When he retired he had a meeting five days a week, there were different meetings of the city or at church or what ever but he was just as busy and he never wanted for anything. It was as you said, you didn’t know when he had time to work and he was very busy, therefore he was very happy doing what he was doing.
MRS. MCNALLY: I guess I don’t want to put words in your mouth but it sort of seems to those of us who were looking at it that, you know, he felt very comfortable with Ralph and Rick, that, you know, he had laid the foundation and they were going to be able to step in those roles and he felt comfortable that the hospital was going to be steered in the right direction….
MRS. WHISNANT: Oh, yes he did, yes, it is.
MRS. MCNALLY: That is how it seemed to me, that it was a very smooth transition.
MRS. WHISNANT: It was.
MRS. MCNALLY: And that you know their values were the same, the mission was the same. You had a sense that, you know, that the leadership team, that it was a very natural progression.
MRS. WHISNANT: Right.
MRS. MCNALLY: You know some types of organizations don’t always have that.
MRS. WHISNANT: That is true.
MRS. MCNALLY: I think, you know, to Marshall’s credit, I think he worked hard to develop and mentor and position Ralph and Rick to be ready for those roles.
MRS. WHISNANT: It was never any question in his mind, that they…
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes, and not everyone had the opportunity sometimes to work.
MRS. WHISNANT: Right because the people aren’t there long enough.
MRS. MCNALLY: And it is like we said it was such a stable team and there were those years of working together…
MRS. WHISNANT: And all the team members were so vastly different.
MRS. MCNALLY: They were, they were. And I remember one of the things that Marshall always said and I have stolen it shamelessly because I believe it and at the time he said it, I am not sure I had a full understanding the first time I heard him say it but he said, “I always try to hire people smarter than me.”
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes.
MRS. MCNALLY: I had a lot of respect for Marshall’s intellect because I think he was very bright and very visionary and creative but I think really what he meant is don’t hire people just like yourself. You need a team of people who have strengths that you don’t have. That as a team then you bring a collective strength to the issue. I think he truly believed that.
MRS. WHISNANT: Yes, he did.
MRS. MCNALLY: He was fascinated by ideals and he was never intimidated by someone else having a good idea. So I think that leaders today could learn something from that.
MRS. WHISNANT: And he always wanted the people that were really in touch with the patient to bring their ideas because they were on the front line and he encouraged that.
MRS. MCNALLY: I guess one of the things too, and I don’t know how much you were even aware of it but I think it would be remiss if we didn’t mention it. You know in the ‘80’s Marshall became an avid reader of Dr. Deming and all of the quality control methods that he developed. He learned and brought in other research and information at that time about process improvement and quality improvement and you know brought that to Methodist in a very organized way. I remember that as the leader of the hospital (you know I was a manager at that time) he said, we are going to do this….we are going to learn how to do it. And we are going to use tried and true techniques to improve quality and service. You know we had teams and we had a steering team and we had facilitators and we trained people in Dr. Deming’s methods. You know Marshall really deserves the credit for leading that effort and as the president of the hospital he believed it, he believed it was the right thing to do. He clearly set high expectations, we are going to do this and he meant it. I don’t know how much of that he talked about at home.
MRS. WHISNANT: Oh he talked about it a lot. Yes, he believed in that whole-heartedly.
MRS. MCNALLY: Yes, he did. And you know when Methodist won the Tennessee Quality Award…
MRS. WHISNANT: That was wonderful.
MRS. MCNALLY: It was wonderful but he set the stage for that about five years before when he started us on that journey and we were about to achieve the results.
MRS. WHISNANT: I wondered since then, if any of that is still going on?
MRS. MCNALLY: It is very much so and you know the things evolved and you learn some better ways to do things but this Journey to Excellence which is one of the things I have an opportunity to coach and to work on right now with all the hospitals. It is very much founded in those quality principles and also you may or may not be aware but Methodist has been recognized at the state and national level for the quality of their care and their clinical processes, pretty significantly in the last few years. I think that is very much built on that foundation of process improvement and being very rigorous about doing that in a very formal, structured way and focusing on results. And it resulted in benefit for patients, which is what we are all about. So Marshalll certainly was the father of that at Methodist and very much set the stage for that, so I think that is a very important part of the legacy, he leaves a very important part. Well, anything else that you think is important, noteworthy, or just memories that you have to add?
MRS. WHISNANT: Well, I just feel that it was a wonderful time for our family, the whole 38 years.
MRS. MCNALLY: And having your family growing up in Oak Ridge.
MRS. WHISNANT: All three graduated from Oak Ridge High School and I went to the dedication last week which was really wonderful.
MRS. MCNALLY: It is a great place to have your family.
MRS. WHISNANT: It is.
MRS. MCNALLY: And Methodist was and has been and is, you know, a great place for people to work and for people to get care and for doctors to come and practice and Marshall is certainly a key part of that legacy so I appreciate your time today.
MRS. WHISNANT: You are very welcome.
[End of Interview]
METHODIST MEDICAL CENTER ORAL HISTORY:
WILLIAM (BILL) J. WILCOX, JR.
Interviewed by Patricia Clark
August 18, 2008
MRS. CLARK: I am Pat Clark interviewing Bill Wilcox, long time Oak Ridger and designated our City Historian. The interview is to get resource material to develop a history of the hospital. Bill has a long acquaintance with that. I have Bill’s release form, that he understands the arrangements for this meeting. So we will begin with Bill telling us a little bit about yourself where you were born, your educational experience, and when you came to Oak Ridge.
MR. WILCOX: Ok, Pat, I came to Oak Ridge in 1943 just having graduated from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia as a chemist and anxious to do something to help in our war effort. I interviewed a number of companies who later turned out to all be connected with the Manhattan Project because in the May 1943, many of the big industrial companies that were going to run the Manhattan Project were out scrubbing the graduating classes for chemists and physicists and any kind of technical people they could get to come and be the front line supervisors of the plants at Oak Ridge at elsewhere in the country. I accepted an offer from Eastman Kodak --- actually from a subsidiary called Tennessee Eastman Company. At my hire time there was nothing in Oak Ridge, of course, they were clearing the reservation of farms, building roads and fences in May 1943 so all of us new hires, there were about 50 of us that went to work at Eastman Kodak’s research labs in Rochester, NY. We spent the summer there doing research on uranium processing chemistry for Y-12 and came down here when the first buildings were finished in October 1943. So that’s how I came here.
MRS. CLARK: What was your work assignment when you came?
MR. WILCOX: I was a chemist in the Beta Chemistry recycle operations, of course I knew what I was supposed to do in my lab, but I had no idea where the stuff that I worked on came from or where it went after I got through with it. I was a chemist and our job was purification of uranium and it turned out later that what we were doing is taking the material that was washed off the Alpha calutron receivers and purifying it getting rid of iron, nickel, copper, and other elements in the solutions we got, then purifying it and getting it ready to go into the Beta calutrons final enrichment step. So that was our Beta chemistry job 1943, 1944 and 1945.
MRS. CLARK: I am wondering when you realized what the secret was?
MR. WILCOX: Well, about the same time everybody else in the country did, Pat. August 6, 1945. I knew I was working on uranium 235, as a chemist you had to know that. Of course we keep that all secret, but I guessed it was for an atomic bomb but I had no idea about the schedule for the bomb, or how much material we had made, or how much we had shipped, or when it might be used, and what kind of power it might have. So I was just delighted and surprised as everybody else in the United States and most of the people in Oak Ridge of the 75,000 people that lived here, I guess that about 73,000 of us had only a smattering knowledge not the whole picture so we were all just surprised and delighted that the work we had been doing so long and working so hard for had finally resulted in something of value. Hopefully might help end this terrible war we were in.
MRS. CLARK: Where did you live when you first came?
MR. WILCOX: I was single, 20 years old, so I lived in a dormitory like 13,000 other single people here. I lived in M2 which is on the road right down from the Army hospital. That ridge that the hospital stands on and Ridgeview Mental Health Center now, that whole ridge all the way down to Tyler was covered with men’s dormitories on one side and women’s dormitories on the Turnpike side.
MRS. CLARK: You have helped somewhat describe how the city looked when you first came, where all 75,000 people here when you came or?
MR. WILCOX: Well they. No, when I came the city was just beginning to be built and I would say that there were probably 10,000 or 20,000 people here when I arrived in the fall of 1943. Two years later the town had grown to 75,000, that peak population was achieved in May 1945. So the town had a meteoric, explosive rise in population from about 3,000 people before the Army took the land over. It went from 3,000 in November 1942 to 75,000 in May 1945.
MRS. CLARK: And I know you met Jeanie here, would you like to comment on that?
MR. WILCOX: Love to. She was one of the 13,000 singles here. Jeanie was top flight secretary at Y-12 and she was the division secretary for the Security Division and then for the Maintenance Division at Y-12. She was a flaming red head and I chased her all over the place here for three years before she said, she would marry me. She was having too good a time dating lots of other guys. Singles, really, we worked our heads off but at night we really had a great place for singles, because the community was a closed community in the sense that everybody here had a job and everybody had been investigated by the FBI. So the girls felt comfortable about the guys that were here, it was more like a college campus feeling. You knew what everybody else was here for -- why people were here was to help with the war and so it was a good feeling of trust that you don’t have in many communities. It was a fun place for singles. We bowled and we went to four movies a week at the Center Theater which is now the Playhouse and we danced every night at the Ridge Rec (Recreation) Hall which was across the street from the Alexander Motor Inn.
MRS. CLARK: When where you and Jeanie married?
MR. WILCOX: We were married in August 17, 1946 and we celebrated just yesterday our 62nd Wedding Anniversary.
MRS. CLARK: Congratulations, Bill. Where did you live when you and Jeannie first married?
MR. WILCOX: We lived in Goshen Hall which was a converted H-type dormitory out in the Jefferson Circle, Lincoln Circle it was called. It is close to where the Weatherford Mortuary is now, and it had been converted from single rooms & doubles to suites for married couples and we moved into Goshen Hall in August 1946.
MRS. CLARK: Well let’s get to the first hospital Board of Trustees on which you served. When was that?
MR. WILCOX: The hospital, you remember, was won in an election by the Holston Conference of the Methodist Church in the referendum of 1959 and the first board took over on July 1st, 1960; the date in which the AEC turned everything over to the city of Oak Ridge, now incorporated. That turnover of all the City roads, streets and the fire department and the police department and the brand new hospital all took place on July 1st, 1960. So that is when the first board of the ORHMC went into duty and I was elected to the board three years later in 1963.
MRS. CLARK: Who were other members of the board?
MR. WILCOX: Well, I have a list of them, which I can attach. There were actually 24, it was a large board with 24 people on the board and I have copies of the original charter of the corporation and the bylaws that were passed, these documents explain how these 24 people served. They were in three panels serving three years each, panels of eight people each. So I was on the panel that started in 1963 and I served my three year term and then was re-elected to another three year term, so the years I served were 1963 through 1969. The chairman of the board, the first year was George Christy, he was the chairman for a couple of years, and then Merrill Bird was the chairman for the other years that I served. The board was constituted at the time according the charter, two thirds of the board were to be Methodist’s, with 18 of the board had to be residents in the area that the hospital served. That’s not only from the city, it included Knoxville at the time, so there was some attempt, you see, to have people other than Methodists on the board and my first year for example, 1963, there were 7 non-Methodists on the board -- but it was primarily a Methodist board. Because it was so large they had a large number of committees but one of them was an executive committee which was eight people and it turns out (I learned pretty quickly) that the group that knew what was going on was the executive committee and we had a very strong minded director of the hospital at the time, his name was Paul Bjork and Paul ran a very tight ship. I was a little frustrated in my first years when I found out that I was not welcome to examine the finance records of the church except for a somewhat perfunctory summary report that was issued. He ran a tight ship. But it was a very interesting board to be on.
MRS. CLARK: What do you remember about the original physical plant when you went on the board?
MR. WILCOX: It was a brand new hospital just finished in 1959 and so when I went on the board in 1963 it was still sparkling brand new. It was such a huge improvement over the Army hospital which had not been built with the intention of it lasting 20 years, so everybody was thrilled with the brand new hospital.
MRS. CLARK: Was it built on the site of the Army hospital?
MR. WILCOX: Yes, it was built on the site of the Army hospital but it was much more compact, the Army hospital had sort of been built like topsy with the population growing to 75,000 and nobody in 1943 expected the town to grow past about 20,000 and so all of a sudden the population was so large the hospital just had to build another wing and then had to build another wing and so on, that it had grown spread all over the hill top there. So the new hospital was compact and much taller instead of just one or two stories, it was a four story building. Very, very nice.
MRS. CLARK: Who were some of the early doctors?
MR. WILCOX: The chief of staff was always on the board as an ex-officio member in addition to the twenty-four. There were other ex officio members on it, at least eight, but there might be even more because each of the Methodist ministers in town was an ex-officio member of the hospital board. So the board when it met for its annual meeting it was a very, very large group, it might have been 36 or so. The doctor that was the chief of staff in my first year was Raymond Johnson, MD. In my later years, Avery King, MD was the chief of staff of the hospital.
MRS. CLARK: What were some of the problems the board faced?
MR. WILCOX: The problems the board faced I would say there were then primarily basic survival issues - about internal problems about how to pay for the Medical Arts building that we built and how to pay for renovating the West Mall wing which we were turning into a brand new thing called a Nursing Home. There were those internal problems but external (as far as the community was concerned) the board still faced a lot of hostility that was left over from the election which then still very, very painful in the minds of a lot of the towns people. That election that I referred to earlier determined who was going to own this brand new hospital that the Congress authorized be built for $2.9 million. The fight was three ways. Should doctors own and run it; should it be a city hospital, should it be Methodist church run. Well one of the institutions was the hospital and the Congress had agreed to build this new hospital and they did build it. For a decade (1950s) the hospital had been run by a citizen’s board (501C3 type) of corporation called The Oak Ridge Hospital Incorporated - which included some doctors and other top movers and shakers in town. All through the 1950’s the Army hospital had been run by the Oak Ridge Incorporated, this citizens group. All the bills were being paid by the Federal Government and they had a hospital administrator whose name was Carl Jeffries all through the 1950’s. So when the Atomic Energy Commission in 1958 announced that they were going to give this brand new hospital to somebody the Oak Ridge Hospital Incorporated Group went to the AEC and said, “Well you don’t need to wonder who should take it over, of course it should be us, we have been running this for 10 years and we know all the problems that there are, so why talk about giving it to anybody else.” But the AEC decided that it should not be a slam dunk decision and the others should be allowed to consider owning it. They did not want to… I think they didn’t want the public to feel like they were dictating who should have the hospital. The AEC then opened the ownership possibility to other people and there was a great deal of interest in the part of the community in 1958/59. The Methodists decided they were going to ask for it to be given to the Methodist Church and then a group formed who wanted it to be given to the new city. The people that were getting ready to incorporate the city thought it should be a city hospital. So there were three groups in 1959 that were vying for opportunity to run the hospital. They had a three way election and more people turned out to vote for that, than had voted in years. The result was a pretty even, three-way split. It was very close but the city lost, had the smallest number of votes but it was not decisive. So there was a run-off election between the Methodist Church and the Oak Ridge Hospital Incorporated Group and the Methodists won. And that time it was fairly decisive. But the group that had been running the hospital was very upset and still was in 1963 when I went on the board, --- still a great deal of hostility. The very month that I took office in October 1943 there was a long letter to the editor in the Oak Ridger by Carl Jeffries who had been the administrator of ORH, Inc for 10 years ; now this was in October 1963. He just lambasted the board and said that the Oak Ridge Hospital Methodist Church had promised all these things in the fight for the referendum and (let me read from his letter): “Not a single promise has been kept, their solemn promises have been violated in every instance and there is no evidence of protest by any member of the governing board.” He goes on, “I had been hoping that the Methodist Church, the church that most of my own people for generations might wake up and make restitution to the people of Oak Ridge for the outrageous operation of the hospital so far provided by the Holston conference.” He goes on and on, citing chapter and verse of what the Methodists promised during the campaign. To me, a brand new board member waking up and reading this in the paper, it was alarming. I made a long list of comments and questions for the next board meeting and I just thought, “My gracious we should do something about this.” I wrote a little talk, and made it. I talked to a couple civic clubs titled “How a Citizen Looks at His Hospital,” and the feelings were very strong. From my standpoint it seemed the Board had a major PR problem and I learned soon a lot of them knew there was a PR problem but were being led by the Executive Committee and Counsel. I felt very much like …well they listened to me but I was just one voice. The size of the huge board was one of the problems and not much over two years later we ended up with a disastrous (PR standpoint) strike/walk out. So that didn’t help our image in the community a bit more.
MRS. CLARK: Well, Carl Jeffries would have been out. Is that when Paul Bjork came in?
MR. WILCOX: Yes, well Jeffries was the hospital administrator for The Oak Ridge Hospital Incorporated Group which lost in 1959 and then he went out and Paul came in. -- the Holston Conference Group went in.
MRS. CLARK: You mentioned a strike; would you like to talk more about that?
MR. WILCOX: Well it is an important part, little part of our history; it sure upset the City terribly and maybe worth a sidebar. The trouble had started brewing long before 1966. The immediate cause was the action against the hospital was brought by the BSEIU (Building Services Employees International Union) for the non-nursing people in the hospital and they wanted to organize the staff and have the hospital recognize them as a bargaining agent for all of the orderlies and other hourly workers in the hospital. Initially their interest was in representing both the professional and non-professional, that is to say the nurses as well as everybody else. But even before the middle of July 1966, Paul Bjork started talking to the TN Nurses Association in Nashville so the BSEIU dropped the idea they wanted to represent the nurses and settled on just wanting to represent the others. The hospital board responded to the growing (obviously we had a real problem), so the hospital put out a new personnel policy July 1st which raised wages and guaranteed that nobody would make less than the minimum wage of $1.10 per hour and we increased/improved the other benefits...It was really a good will effort, sadly a little late, on the part of the hospital trying to stem this growing unrest and to stop this push towards recognition of the union which of course the hospital did not want. Well the BSEIU refused to be satisfied with the new personnel policy and went out on strike on July 1st and a number of nurses even went out on strike too at the same time. The Oak Ridger was full of every edition for the next seven weeks, 51 days, of stories about the pickets at six different locations going into the hospital. The volunteers rallied, and lots came to help keep the patients well served. I make it sound like there were lots of people were unhappy with us, true, but there were lots of people in town that were still happy with us and we had lots of volunteers helping sweep the floors, and so on. ……. At first we had people helping in the kitchen too, but the BSEIU found out about that and went to the city and said these people don’t have health cards, it is against the law…..and they stopped that. One of the articles in the paper said that there were about one out every four nurses striking. In other words, there were still a lot of nurses and the hospital of course was very anxious to make sure that patients were taken care of properly. It was a sad, sad situation. We (the Hospital) guided by our lawyers, refused to talk or give out any information about censuses, would not even sit and talk to the union for weeks and newspaper chewed us out royally for that ---but we finally did start talking and the strike ended at 51 days. The union did not get their recognition, they got an agreement with the hospital that anybody could join the BSEIU but we agreed all employees were free to join or not to join the BSEIU and the hospital agreed to sign on the dotted line the July 1 personnel policies which we had refused to do all through the strike. We maintained this is our policy and it is all you need, but the union insisted that it be signed. They apparently felt we would not live up to it or something. So in the end we did agree to sign that and we did agree to rehire all the strikers that wanted to come back and give them all their benefits. That was the end of that. It was a difficult time, worsened by the City getting into it; the City Council calling for a referendum on the ownership which was ridiculous but they wanted some public denunciation of the current owners -- that never did happen. The City did manage to call a big hearing in the City Council chambers and the board of trustees sat on the dais like were on trial, and the BSEIU sat on the front row and there was a big splash picture in the newspaper and I’m sitting up there along with the rest of the board members, it was an agonizing evening we had there. But the discussions were reasonably civil. They stated their case and Merrill Bird stated our case. We weathered it, but it was no fun. That was a tough year 1966; I served for three more years. One of them finally as Treasurer of the hospital, that after I had been a member of the circle for eight years! I had served on the key executive committee for the last few years. Paul Bjork resigned in 1967. The strike ended in August, he left the following summer, and we hired Marshall Whisnant who of course was an outstanding administrator for many, many years. Three decades or so. Marshall was quite a different administrator than Paul. He really built a fine relationship with the community so that by the time he had been here 10 years or so the community was proud of the hospital, the service being given, and even the way the Methodist Church was running it.
MRS. CLARK: So the administrators hired were Methodist? Still are?
MR. WILCOX: I don’t know.
MRS. CLARK: I think Jan McNally is?
MR. WILCOX: Probably. Probably. I would guess they would be. But, interestingly the board composition has changed through the years from my time. The board when I served was 24 with the 16 Methodists and so on. Somewhere along the during Marshall’s tenure here, the bylaws were changed and the 24 person “Board of Trustees” was reconstituted and by 1985, I know, we had a “Board of Directors” instead of a “Board of Trustees” and there in 1985 it had only 12 people. It stayed that way for at least 10 years until the Covenant relationship developed and at that time we no longer had a “Board of Directors” but now a “MMC Advisory Board” since 1995 ---so the shape of management has changed a great deal over the years.
MRS. CLARK: Were you ever a patient?
MR. WILCOX: Oh, many times. First in 1956. Jeanie and I were both in the hospital at the same time! She had pleurisy and I came in with a bleeding ulcer. They found out about us being both there at the same time and they put us in the same room. So we were in the same room with different aliments for a little while. I had several operations over the years, including my second of two heart by-pass operations. The first one was 1980 and our hospital was not doing them and I had to go to Baptist in Knoxville but my second, I had it here. I had wonderful care, of course I love the hospital as an intuition, and I think they have just done a wonderful, wonderful job providing health care for Oak Ridgers for all these years.
MRS. CLARK: Let’s look at Jeanie a little bit. She was very active in the hospital.
MR. WILCOX: Jeanie, after raising our children, volunteered for years, a day or two a week. Ralph Lillard, finally in 1972 or so asked her to take on the job of being the Hospital’s first paid director of volunteers. She had been doing such a great job for ORHMC and so she took that on and did that for about 20 years or so. Eventually combined all the different volunteer organizations into one. When she went in, there was a group of Red Cross volunteers called the Gray Ladies, and there was a Gift Shop, and there was a Candy Stripers organization and then there was a Pink Ladies Volunteer organization and she brought them all together. She just had a great time. I think did a wonderful job for the hospital.
MRS. CLARK: Well Bill are there any aspects of your service on the board, we had not covered? Is there anything else you would like to comment on?
MR. WILCOX: No, I think I touched on it. Lots of details but I think I have painted the general picture. I certainly cherish my years on the board and look back on them with a great pleasure despite the ups and downs that we had. I think I saw the evolution of the hospital from one which it was very much concerned with its own survival and not too concerned about its image in the community. I saw that change in the six years that I served on the board to a hospital which was determined that they were going to build a great reputation in the community and do it by providing the best quality health care they possibly could.
MRS. CLARK: Do you have anything else to add?
MR. WILCOX: Thanks to you for putting up with me for this interview, Pat. Thank you so much.
MRS. CLARK: Well it’s been delightful, Bill. I hope we covered everything you needed to say.
MR. WILCOX: Thank you.
[End of Interview]
METHODIST MEDICAL CENTER ORAL HISTORY:
DR. ALBERT WILEY
Interviewed by Ray Smith
August 27, 2008
[Editor’s note: The recording microphone was too close to the interviewer and too far from the person being interviewed. The volume too low so that there is a high background noise that makes Dr. Wiley extremely difficult to hear and understand.]
MR. SMITH: What is REAC/TS and what is its relationship with MMC?
DR. WILEY: REAC/TS is a Medical Radiological Emergency Response team.
MR. SMITH: What does REAC/TS stand for?
DR. WILEY: Radiological Emergency Assistance Center/Training Site. We are funded almost entirely by NNSA. It was established, to the best of my knowledge, by the Department of Energy to provide a medical response to radiation accidents. They had a criticality accident at Y-12, I think back around the late ‘50s, 1958, that had something to do with the interest by the Department of Energy in establishing a group such as REAC/TS. Prior to that, they had Oak Ridge Associated Universities Cancer Hospital here and then the hospital, once REAC/TS got funded then, in many ways, took over the emergency response medical emergency assistance, but did not continue any other roles in the hospital [inaudible] research radioactive [inaudible]. We are strictly an operational group, somewhat like a fire department. When we are not responding, we are training ourselves, and then we are training other people to make sure they are capable of response when we are needed. Fortunately, it’s not that often so we end up spending most of our time training other people. We provide many courses for mainly medical people, nurses, paramedics, and physicians at our training site. They come from all over the country for a variety of courses, maybe 13 or 14 a year that run for generally about one week long. Rather unique courses [inaudible] not only do we provide [inaudible] lectures, but we actually really drill, which most people think is fairly unique, real people, real situations very much like an emergency room environment that people would experience in a real radiological accident. We do a lot of training offsite, also and increasingly more and probably [inaudible] number of courses [inaudible] offsite to begin with Department of Energy [inaudible] deal with radiological materials, National Lab, and other places that [inaudible] increasingly training other people in other branches of government such as CDC and a variety of other large hospital around the country that are [inaudible] that in essence if most of what we do.
We also provide the national registry of radiation accidents, most of the accidents that occur in this country and in the world. We periodically study these data and try and learn how to better respond [inaudible] research. In the registry we also provide [inaudible] tools. A couple of years ago, we were the national stockpile for certain [inaudible] drugs, medical counter measures, which were counteracts the [inaudible] of radioactive materials [inaudible] did provide international stockpile, couple of years ago. We still maintain a stockpile, [inaudible] investigating a program would be [inaudible] involving mostly the national laboratory. National lab has a problem, they call us. [Inaudible]. Finally, we do provide emergency response nationally and internationally. We are fairly active in that area in recent years, because we are participating in a large national exercise [inaudible] as part of the medical group, called FERMAC. [Inaudible] It’s a large Department of Energy group [inaudible]. Each section of the country, they all come together and tell us [inaudible] base in Las Vegas, Nevada [inaudible] do a lot of exercises. Medical about 300 people when they all come together. [Inaudible] I have also participated in some international exercises in Korea [inaudible]. The last actual emergency response [inaudible].
Venezuela so occasionally. [Inaudible] United States. Generally, [inaudible] participated in management.
MR. SMITH: Your location is very near the MMC?
DR. WILEY: We are physically attached to the medical center. In fact, the medical center owns the entire facility and the Department of Energy rented it.
MR. SMITH: Is there any other tie between the local hospital and REAC/TS?
DR. WILEY: Yes, as I mentioned exercise participation. We have exercises here at Oak Ridge that you know, Y-12 [inaudible] DOE complex. Mandatory yearly exercises [inaudible]. We have a very close relationship with the hospital. We have an agreement where contaminated people come into the Emergency Room [inaudible] decontamination. [Inaudible].
MR. SMITH: Has there been any occasion where you mentioned most response was to Venezuela, has there been response in the states?
DR. WILEY: That was the most recent international response. We respond probably to 50 calls a year all over this country, although we occasionally get calls internationally.
MR. SMITH: Is it fair to say if there is an accident or an incident involving radiation worldwide, that it is in all likelihood, you are going to get involved in that?
DR. WILEY: I would say the likelihood is extremely high. We are actually a world health organization. [inaudible] We participate in their exercises. [inaudible] and we go to their meetings. We also work very closely with the International Atomic Energy [inaudible] and periodically ask us for our assistance in an accident investigation. So we have close ties internationally. [Inaudible] where we are pretty well involved [inaudible] certainly at consultation level. Occasionally, we actually have to go offsite [inaudible].
MR. SMITH: Now as you know, there are three DOE sites here in Oak Ridge, have there been occasions where you had to respond to incidents here locally that involve the hospital and you as well.
DR. WILEY: Actual incidents that we get called about are things that have happened not infrequently, very seldom involved with very serious explosion. The last time we had any real need to respond locally was [inaudible] Y-12. I was not here at the time. That happened a couple of years before I came.
MR. SMITH: I was actually on the emergency response for that accident at Y-12. I am very familiar with it only from the Y-12 perspective not what happened to them when they got to the hospital.
DR. WILEY: Well, there were some serious injuries. A lot of the patients had to be transferred to Chattanooga.
MR. SMITH: I don’t think you need specific knowledge about that incident but we could use that one as a typical, when Y-12 or ORNL or anyone has employees coming out of those areas, they could possibly be bringing radiation contamination out with them, is that where you would get your organization to get immediately involved in the Emergency Room.
DR. WILEY: We would get immediately involved. Any patient coming into the Emergency Room. We’ve had several other small incidents [inaudible] with very minimal contamination [inaudible] simply washing it off. [inaudible].
MR. SMITH: There were several people involved. You’re right, it was very serious. One individual never came back to work. Very bad burns. But again, the relationship that you have with the hospital here makes, if I can turn that on its ear just a little bit, it makes the hospital quite unique because not many other hospitals will have the resource of having a REAC/TS unit right here physically on site.
DR. WILEY: Yes, that is absolutely correct. [inaudible] capability.
MR. SMITH: Can you think of anything else with the relationship between REAC/TS and the hospital that we ought to capture? We talked about training, we talked about exercises, we talked about actual events, we talked about the capability. We may have covered it.
DR. WILEY: I think that is pretty much it, as far as I know.
MR. SMITH: What we will do is include the material that you have here along with the oral history document. I’ll take that and put it in here, that way we will have it.
DR. WILEY: Very good.
MR. SMITH: Can you think of anything else? I might not have asked all the right questions to get everything that you would want to be sure to leave on the tape about it.
DR. WILEY: We, a year or so ago, we were fortunate enough to get money from [inaudible] to establish [inaudible] REAC/TS. We did have this lab at REAC/TS for about a period of about 10 years, 1980s, 1990s, lack of funding caused it to be closed for about 10 years. What this capability does for us at REAC/TS is it gives us the unique capability to assess radiation exposures that people might have had [inaudible]. As you know, the general public, for example, could be very valuable for things like dirty bombs or other terrorist-type things. The general public may be exposed to, of course they don’t wear dosimeter not like people who work in the labs but it turns out that their lymphocytes in their bloodstream can act as a dosimeter. There are certain changes within lymphocytes [inaudible] creation of a certain type of abnormal chromosomes which can be analyzed in blood samples obtained from people who were exposed and give us an idea of what the radiation dose was. We exercised it at international exercises and it is a unique capability [inaudible] civilian way Unites States. [inaudible] research Institute. [inaudible] Very important tool in our emergency response. We have actually two emergency response teams. Each team consists of at least a minimum of a nurse paramedic, a physician, [inaudible] and we are on 24/7. We are called to respond four hours within the United States which we would be on a plane going to the incident. We are also 24/7 for international with a six-hour response time. So, these teams would be deployed within four to six hours [inaudible] with people that I mentioned with a fair amount of medical equipment. Anti-radiation drugs.
[End of Interview]